picturesqueness of Highland life and incident to our own homes. He has given us a history every page of which is full of beauty and instruction, no mere dry didactic volume of topography, but a lifelike breathing tome-grand, majestic, sublime. Were it possible to blot out these pictorial pages there would be a positive blank no less in the world of art than in the field of natural history. With the exception of Turner's, perhaps the works of no modern artist could be so ill spared.

There is another aspect of Landseer's creations that must not be overlooked. His strictly ideal and historical performances are not unimportant. They demonstrate the versatility of his genius and his masterly knowledge of art. Amongst these may be classed such compositions as "Time of Peace," "Time of War," "Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time," " Maid and the Magpie," "Dialogue at Waterloo," "Windsor Castle," and a variety of courtly scenes rendered familiar by the engraver's art. These latter, however, have never gained great hold on the public mind, nor would they per se be calculated to hand down Sir Edwin's reputation to posterity. In the atmosphere of royalty he fails by excess of affectation and exaggeration. He who could endow the members of the brute creation with intelligence and emotion, lighting up their features with expressions of dignity and power, or investing them with sentiments of grief, pathos, or humour, utterly failed to clothe his royal personages with the attributes of grace and majesty. Mr. Ruskin, speaking in his "Modern Painters" of Titian, observes that in a picture in the Louvre "he has put a whole scheme of dogmatic theology into a row of bishops' backs." Landseer displayed this high artistic faculty in the case of the lower animals, but missed it entirely when dealing with the human figure, and especially in the representation of royalty. His proper field, wide and cosmopolitan as it was, extended not to that of Court painter. His last finished effort in this direction was the picture of "Her Majesty at Osborne in 1866," exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867, representing the widowed Queen seated on a black horse, which her gillie is holding, whilst she is engaged in perusing a letter. Two of the Princesses seated in the mid-distance are in half-mourning. The trees are funereal, and a heavy lowering pall of rain-cloud forms the distant background. The picture, which is little more than grey monochrome, is weak and unimpressive. Meant for a poem, it is not even a piece of simple natural portraiture. Sydney Smith, in reply to Lord and Lady Holland, when they requested him to sit to Landseer for his portrait, asked: "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?"

At that time Landseer's animal-portraiture had begun to attract attention, and it may be that Sydney Smith foresaw that the young painter was not destined to shine in the field of human portraiture; that he was not likely to become in this country, under the patronage of the nobility, and eventually of royalty, what another great animal painter—Velasquez · becanie under the Court of Philip III. and Philip IV. of Spain. Landseer and Velasquez are the antitheses of each other as regards their treatment of royal personages. The great realistic painter of Castile makes us feel the august presence. His kings are robust, dignified, grand. Landseer's treatment is thin, feeble, fastidious, uncertain. With Velasquez, simplicity becomes grandeur; with Landseer, the attempt to be grand results in insipidity. He does not, however, disappoint us in the same way in the portrayal of the human figure generally. What can be more charming in its way than "The Maid and the Magpie," forming part of Mr. Jacob Bell's bequest to the nation? This picture is not only essentially ideal in treatment, but it displays very superior technical qualities. The tone of colour, too, is pitched in a higher key than usual with Landseer, whose works are, as a rule, somewhat deficient in this respect. But here all is radiant with light and beauty, and the poetry is pure and tender. The picture is well known. The incident is from a trial in the French Causes Célèbres, and has formed the groundwork of more than one French drama. It was also adapted by Rossini for his opera of the Gazza Ladra." In Landseer's painting a pretty milkmaid is seated in a shed by the side of a cow which she is about to milk, and is apparently more intent on what her lover is saying than on her immediate business. Whilst her attention is thus distracted, a mischievous magpie has seized and is about to carry off a silver spoon placed in one of two wooden shoes by her side, the innocent theft of which caused her so much unfounded suspicion and misery. A couple of exquisitely painted goats and a calf appear on the right, and the view looking out from the open shed is highly literal in its fidelity to nature and ideal in its imaginative grasp. In "A Dialogue at Waterloo," in the Vernon Collection, now in the National Gallery, there is much charming painting in the peasant family of guides at dinner on the left; but the well-known and prominently-treated figure of the Duke of Wellington, and of his companion, the Marchioness of Douro, the present Duchess of Wellington, both of whom are on horseback, seem to bear no harmonious relation or balance-no keeping-to the sky and general accessories. The Duke is pointing out to his companion on the field the plan of that ever-memorable battle, and VOL. XII., N.S. 1874.

F

is supposed by the painter at the moment represented to have quoted the last lines of Southey's poem on the Battle of Blenheim :

This picture is also known by the words of the last line, the citation of which, however, does not apparently enkindle any enthusiasm in the Duke or his fair companion. They survey the scene alike unmoved by the exclamation of the poet or the associations of the place.

The painter was happier in dealing with peasant life. His sportsmen, particularly those of the lower type, are for the most part genuine and characteristic. Comparing Landseer with his Parisian rival, Rosa Bonheur, it is a question whether, as regards the treatment of human character, the Englishman has not the disadLandseer's figures lack the vigour and solidity — the vantage. physique-which distinguish those of the French "Pauline Potter." The English master is tame and effeminate, the Frenchwoman bold and masculine. In a diminished degree this is true also of their treatment of horses and cattle. The vigour and vitality of such works as "The Horse Fair," "Ploughing in the Nivernais," "The Farmer of Auvergne," "The Chalk Waggon of Limouzin," and "The Hay Field," by which Rosa Bonheur is best known in this country, are incomparable. The poetry of healthy motion abounds. And yet nothing is strained or exaggerated. Landseer, equally truthful beyond question, impresses us less with the idea of motion than with repose. His cattle are sleek, velvety, genteel; his horses robust and fleshy, but hardly enough indicative of muscular strength or exertion. They have never endured hardship. Typical of high life, they are outside the cognisance of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The sympathetic and loving heart of the painter led him to look only on the bright side of animate nature. I do not recollect a single instance in which he has portrayed, for instance, any of the poor hacks of our streets, whose living epitaph has been written by Shakespeare. To Landseer doubtless it was painful to witness "the grim down-roping from their pale dead eyes," their drag and blunt-cornered mouths, the gaunt imbecility of body dropping its weight on three tired legs in order to give repose to the lame one. Such sights were not congenial to Landseer's nature.

He, indeed, seldom even painted horses in harness. Rosa Bonheur, on the contrary, treats of their work-a-day life. Her early saunterings to see the horses exercised in the avenues of the Bois de Boulogne, before fortune had smiled upon her, may have given the key-note to her subsequent achievements when poverty-the rock which, as Beranger says, stands in the way of genius-was to the family of which she was the hope and pride a thing of the past.

The country is fortunate in possessing nearly the whole of Landseer's pictures. This fact is made evident enough by the loan collection forming the Winter Exhibition at the rooms of the Royal Academy. This exhibition will undoubtedly awaken no ordinary interest. Private galleries have for a time given up their treasures. Pictures which were once the "talk of the town"—almost of the country-but which have some of them for half a century been hidden from the public, will come upon the world of London with startling freshness and renewed welcome. From the collections of Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince of Wales, and from numerous other private galleries, Landseer's paintings are brought to a common centre, making, perhaps, the most complete display of the works of any deceased British artist that has ever been known. The National Gallery, no doubt, possesses in the Vernon Collection and Mr. Jacob Bell's bequest several of the most deservedly popular of Landseer's productions, and these will be absent from Burlington House. An Act of Parliament would be required to enable them to be taken even temporarily out of the national collection. But beyond these exceptions, only a few of the prolific fruits of Landseer's pencil will be missed. Over three hundred of them are familiarly known by engravings. And when it is remembered that for the mere copyright of these works prices ranging from £5 to £3,000 were given, independently, of course, of the purchase money for the pictures, we are enabled to realise how greatly the country has been enriched by the productions of the famous artist now lost to us, whose gallery of paintings all England will be flocking to see by the time when this magazine is in the hands of its readers.

J. CALLINGHAM.

THE THOMAS WALKERS:

THE POPULAR BOROUGHREEVE AND THE AUTHOR OF
"THE ORIGINAL."

TWO BIOGRAPHIES DRAWN FROM UNPUBLISHED FAMILY
CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS.
BY BLANCHARD JERROLD.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE AUTHOR OF "THE ORIGINAL."

R. THOMAS WALKER, of Barlow Hall, had six children, three sons and three daughters--who were all remarkable for great personal beauty, and created a sensation when they drove into Manchester in the family carriage drawn by four horses, or when they appeared at the theatre. Thomas, the eldest of the sons, was born at Barlow Hall on the 10th of October, 1784. He was a sickly child, and although a tall, comely man of distinguished bearing, he is said to have been the least favoured by nature of the boys of "Jacobin" Walker. He prided himself upon his lusty health, and was fearful about the constitution of his brother Charles, who still survives him: while he himself died at the age of fifty-two of pulmonary apoplexy.

"Some months before I was born," he observes in the "Art of Attaining High Health," "my mother lost a favourite child from illness, owing, as she accused herself, to her own temporary absence, and that circumstance preyed upon her spirits and affected her health to such a degree, that I was brought into the world in a very weakly and wretched state. It was supposed I could not survive long; and nothing, I believe, but the greatest maternal tenderness and care preserved my life. During childhood I was very frequently and seriously ill-often thought to be dying, and once pronounced to be dead. I was ten years old before it was judged safe to trust me from home at all, and my father's wishes to place me at a public school were uniformly opposed by various medical advisers, on the ground that it would be my certain destruction." This feeble state of health continued through his growing years, and after he had reached Cambridge, until he vanquished it by making his health his study, in the manner he has minutely described in "The Original."